Interrogating a mber employed by the French Grand Paris Police Departnt, the Third Bureau of the Imperial Office of Tsarist Russia, the German Mainz Intelligence Office, or a secret anti-governnt organization is one of the most exciting professional tasks.
Typically, the situation always favors the Interrogation Officer, but the subject’s training, experience, patience, and perseverance can greatly diminish the Interrogation Officer’s advantage.
The "Intelligence Act" explicitly prohibits MI5 and MI6 from exercising any judicial or police powers. However, counterespionage agencies inevitably need to detain and control targets with a consciousness of resistance for a longer period. In urgent situations, we need to cultivate, adjust, and cease human behavior through suggestion, inducent, or the use of psychological and physiological ans, ensuring the subject’s compliance.
The compliance of the subject may be voluntary, or it may be involuntary. However, it must be emphasized that the interrogation must be conducted in a controllable environnt.
Usually, our interrogation target is to obtain intelligence from hostile secret operations and from individuals or groups participating in these operations. Our interrogation targets are also to obtain intelligence from mbers of foreign intelligence agencies, secret institutions, or underground anti-governnt organizations.
However, unlike police security interrogations, the purpose of our interrogation is not to have the subject confess to their cris and then bring them to court. We do not care which law they violated or what charge hangs over their head. Because for intelligence agencies, a subject admitting guilt is not the end of the interrogation but the prelude to obtaining more intelligence.
——Arthur Hastings "British Secret Intelligence Service Interrogation Manual"
Interrogating Herzen, a year-out-of-school rookie, was truly not a challenging task for Arthur.
Bluntly speaking, for Arthur, even torturing Eld, forcing him to reveal which corner of the bookshelf those treasures purchased in the depths of Greenwich Alley are hidden, was more difficult than interrogating Herzen.
If Arthur were to honestly and impartially evaluate, although Eld is usually unreliable, once he sets his mind on sothing, he wouldn’t be a coward even if his neck were tied to the gallows.
As for why Eld’s reputation is so poor, it’s simply because there aren’t many things he’s set his mind on in his lifeti.
Nevertheless, although Herzen is not difficult to deal with for an experienced Interrogation Officer like Arthur, for the Moscow Police Departnt, which has not received systematic training, interrogation is indeed a challenge.
In this era, political security police in various countries generally remain at the primary stage of physical interrogation, and their leaders generally lack a perspective as far-reaching as Arthur’s. Therefore, for them, interrogation is rely manual labor, nothing more than to see whose thod of corporal punishnt is more innovative.
However, within the London Police Intelligence Bureau, Arthur’s requirent for Interrogation Officers is far more than just sheer strength.
To qualify for a position in the Interrogation Departnt of the Police Intelligence Bureau, one must et four conditions.
First, one must have undergone sufficient training or possess ample interrogation experience to quickly discover clues.
Secondly, one must master at least one foreign language and be very familiar with the language techniques used in interrogation.
Third, one must have rich background knowledge of the subject’s country and fully understand the institution or group to which the subject belongs.
Lastly, Arthur requires all Interrogation Officers to sincerely view subjects as human beings.
Due to these strict conditions, the Interrogation Departnt has always been the highest average educational level, basic quality, and police rank unit in the Police Intelligence Bureau and even the entire Scotland Yard.
All mbers of the Interrogation Departnt hold ranks of Inspector or above, half of the mbers graduated from the University of London, and the other half, although they have not attended university, have been sent to the University of London for further studies for 3 to 6 months.
High investnt ans high return, and it is because of these valuable talents that "Ironheart" Hastings always manages to obtain information unknown to others, including but not limited to: locations of protest gatherings, rosters of protest groups, hidden cri dens, and even firsthand information on the reshuffling of London’s underworld society.
And the biggest difference in interrogation by the Intelligence Bureau under Arthur’s managent compared to other foreign intelligence agencies is that he never advocates the use of confrontational ans.
Although deceiving and inducing the subjects to reveal the desired intelligence is a necessary thod, Arthur requires his Interrogation Officers to first ask themselves the question before starting an interrogation: How can I get him to tell the intelligence?
Rather than: How can I set a trap for him to say the information I want?
As for the reason for doing this...
One can directly quote Arthur’s original words during training for Interrogation Officers—if we treat subjects with hostility directly or use coercive tactics in the first round of confrontation, the subject might no longer be willing to reveal intelligence. Based on experience, most subjects are more willing to disclose intelligence when their personality is respected or treated benevolently. So, unless absolutely necessary, we should first consider how to befriend them.
And Arthur also set an example for the Interrogation Departnt, proving that he is not just talking.
This finest officer throughout all of Britain views his life as a grand-scale interrogation of the entire world, with subjects ranging from the French Black literary giant and Republican Emperor to the young radicals and petty bourgeoisie of Germany and Italy.
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